


A Single Touch

by spookyknight



Series: I Bring Life Project [4]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-20 07:43:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/884737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookyknight/pseuds/spookyknight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A powerful thing, one touch from Rose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Single Touch

**Author's Note:**

> Submission to the I Bring Life Project, prompt: Dalek.

Touch. It’s how twenty percent of all species in the universe communicate. It’s how many species reproduce. With a touch, the Doctor can communicate telepathically, though it’s not his strongest ability. In most forms, the physical contact is soothing. Gentle stimulation of the skin releases cortisol and increases oxytocin levels. It’s always a sure way to grab someone’s attention.

Rose Tyler once altered the basic mindset of the universe’s most dangerous creature with just a touch. Oh yes, and her touch affected the Dalek too of course. A powerful thing, one touch from Rose.

 He feels it has fundamentally affected him from the beginning. Every contact, and the circumstances around it, are catalogued in his mind with perfect clarity. The first time he reached out and she held his hand. The press of lips he used to save her life. Taking her hand again for the first time in a new body, feeling the softness of her skin and the way her fingers still fit perfectly threaded between his. One stolen kiss and thousand different hugs with her warm body pressed securely against him.

The horrible day he couldn’t reach her hand and the touch that didn’t connect across the Void. The long absence, missing her touch and vainly trying to supplement alternate physical contact, as though they could possibly be interchangeable.

Finally, finally embracing her once again, his Rose, this precious, amazing girl who defied the impossible to return to him. And then watching her give in to the impulse that was always there, skimming just below the surface, but with a part of him he had to leave behind.

The Doctor longs for her touch now. He’s gone too far, reverted to habits he thought had changed. There’s a chill in his bones that has nothing to do with the snow. There’s a single gunshot echoing in the night air. He can see the timelines whirling chaotically in response to his actions. And he can picture her standing there before him, showing him the wrongness of his actions in the way only Rose could.

_“What about you, Doctor? What the hell are you changing into?”_

He wonders if a single touch would be enough, if it changed a Dalek, of all the evil beings in the universe, surely it would be enough to bring him back from this precipice.

But Rose is gone, along with her touch, her voice, her beautiful face and soft hair. She’s in the care of his other self now, by his own hand sealed off from him forever. For the better, maybe, at least for her. She’s preserved, kept safe from the darker parts of him that once again are showing through. Rose can remember him the way she left him, happy and validated in victory, surrounded by the friends he gained on this leg of his long journey, the one that started with her.

Rose is safe, presumably happy, but he’s left to go on without her. And he’s no better for it. What has he become without her? What will he become, if allowed to go on?

The Doctor is fixated on it now, touching Rose Tyler. He worries, in the state he’s in now, what he might be willing to do to get that back. Then he thinks, not for the first time, that maybe he’s lived too long.


End file.
